Quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

– Friedrich August von Hayek

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.